New TLS Front Page

[Shademp]

Spoiler: To the general readers of this thread

Thread may appear confusing or nonsensical because decisions and discussions often occur on the chat board.

@Yop

Relabel the "Highlighted Articles and Resources" box in the preview as "More news". Make it so this box lists news that are older than the four most recent newsposts (ask Fangu for the code for this if you don't know it). Make it list six items in total.

See, yet again, Flintlock's Draft as a reference for how the news item list should be structured. Disregard "Materia Design" thingy.

Edit:
Reminder from before.

#2: Near the bottom of the UT Part 5 preview you can find the section title "The Transformation of the Password Challenge". This type of text within <h3></h3> code should be thicker, in the style of the present version.

 

[Cthulhu]

Flint, gives us the font file you used in your preview kthxplz.

 

[Pixel]

Is Trojan Pro not a generic font? I dont remember getting it from anywhere

 

[Cthulhu]

It's not installed by default on windows, at least; by the looks of it it's an Adobe font. Quite popular for movie logos, apparently (Titanic, for example, but also AssCreed).

 

[Flintlock]

I torrented it. In that torrent it's called "Adobe.Trajan.Pro.Commercial.FONT-TYPO / t-atrpro.zip".

This post may be deleted once the font has been acquired. Can't be advocating piracy now, can we?

 

[Cthulhu]

iirc, linking to torrent sites is not a crime. Google does it etc.

Also thanks, I'll see if I can chuck it in there somehow,

 

[Cthulhu]

Hrmright. I've been looking into it, and as it turns out, Trajan Pro is anything but a free font; you need to pay for licenses and shit. There's a few services out there that offer legally using it such as WebInk or Typekit, but those would put us back around $20 a year - or well, WebInk would because we're still below the 20K unique visitors, Typekit wouldn't work because we're only a handful under the 50K pageviews/month.

tl;dr: I don't think we should risk getting sued by Adobe for a header font, . I would be willing to pay for proper fonts, but then we'd have to use more of those custom fonts, I'd say - and tbh for that I'd rather have a professional take a look at things. Maybe when we're fucking huge and a company.

I'll see if I can find a free to use / open source alternative that sorta looks like it. Don't hold your breath though.

Edit: Pick one from here: http://www.google.com/webfonts

edit: We've decided on using Radley, looks pretty neat imho. We're using the color #bccfcf, tell us what you think.

 

[Flintlock]

For the sake of this thread making sense, we're handling this (^) in IRC

 

[Cthulhu]

Fixed the H3 too, think I'll fix the table thing tomorrow, it looks a bit quirky atm .

 

[Cthulhu]

On tables, in reference to this poast, I've done a few things, mostly with CSS classes. What I did was add styles for certain tables, which can be determined by the 'class'-property on the <table>-tag.

No borders

Removes the default 1 px borders from table cells.

  <table class="no-borders">
    <tr>
      <td>Look mom, no borders!</td>
    </tr>
  </table>

Centered content

Centers table cell content. Surprise!

<table class="centered-content">
  <tr>
    <td>Look mom, centered!</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Combining table styles

You can just add both classes to a table by adding multiple classes in the class= attribute, separated by spaces:

<table class="no-borders centered-content">
  <tr>
    <td>Look mom, boobs!</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Fat borders

for the border=4 replacement thing.

<table class="fat-border">
  <tr>
    <td>DAGOOON!</td>
  </tr>
</table>

I've made a table-test page at http://fhtagn.thelifestream.net/final-fantasy-vii/13504/table-test/ , check stuff out there. At the bottom of that one I've also fucked around with border-styles, let me know which ones you like best. These are all with a width of 4px btw.

Unrelated: I Disabled author info box in the theme for now, but, if you guys (i.e. content peoplez) would like to get good street cred, I can reinstate it.

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

i tHinK SitE nEED mR. SatURn fOnt. DaKOta!

 

[Cthulhu]

Let's not spam the thread up, okay?

 

[Fangu]

I know we decided to keep the WP comments for news posts. But looking at the Front page as it is now - it's kinda confusing to have a link to a forum thread, and then have it say "no replies" or "2 comments" below it.

I'm sort of being non functional-Fangu here nao (Functionangu?) and being "random Fangu". I suggest we just get rid of the WP comments altogether. (Gasp!) Sure it would mean people would have to be logged into the forums to comment, but it would decrease the FP/forum gap. This forum seems to be a lot more about VII lately anyway, and not 'yay I had chicken breast for dinner', so it's not like they are separate entities anymore like they used to be.

We could keep comments for posts older than x date. Which is also a way "getting rid of" could be interpreted.

Also yes there is a chance this has been suggested before. Not trying to steal anyone's ideas.

 

[Flintlock]

I've had that idea before and I still support it

 

[Shademp]

I too support the idea of removing the WP comments function for posts made after date x. The question is whether or not we go about this change in a democratic fashion or if we JUST DO IT because very few are actually concerned with issues like these.

EDIT: Ryu also agrees about removing the WP comments function, as long as the old ones are preserved.

EDIT#2: Also Fangu, Yop needs the codes for the "More news" box which will make it display news items older than the four most recent ones. The idea was to have it display six news items. Either you do it or Yop will but either way we need CODES.

 

[Lex]

Is there no way to include a feature/ widgety thing that even gives a preview of the related thread content/ posts under news posts in place of the WP comments? That would be very cool, boost numbers etc. Pretty sure I've mentioned it before too

 

[Shademp]

Fangu has now improved the "More News" box. Great job.

To-do list for More News box:
1) Increase spacing between each news item.
2) Add date to each newspost, in the More News box.

 

[Flintlock]

^ I'll be coming up with a design idea for (2) sometime this week. Then, and this will be an ongoing and much bigger project, I'll start thinking about how our front page articles should be categorised sanely. That will involve changing the current list of categories (at the moment far too much gets thrown into "Final Fantasy VII" because there isn't anything more appropriate), making sure that new articles are put in the right place, and going back through old articles to edit their categorisations where appropriate. I'll start a new thread for it once I have some ideas to begin a consultation.

 

[Flintlock]

I fired up GIMP and started playing around with the "more news" box, but then it occurred to me that I had already included a design idea for it in my big draft. Underneath each article title is their date and category, which we agreed we would put in. Because they then take up two rows of text, materia orbs help draw the reader's attention, or gaze, to the articles themselves.

Looking at that draft, though, I think the "extra" information might need to be a little less prominent. Here I've made it smaller and darker. I have tried to use the same font and font size as Fhtagn, but GIMP renders it differently, so ignore that. I've also made the orbs of articles posted in the last week glow a little more than the others, though I'm not sure if we want that or if it would be easy to script.

Remind me, was I meant to do something else with the design?

 

[Shademp]

Here I've made it smaller and darker. I have tried to use the same font and font size as Fhtagn, but GIMP renders it differently, so ignore that. I've also made the orbs of articles posted in the last week glow a little more than the others, though I'm not sure if we want that or if it would be easy to script.

That looks good.

Remind me, was I meant to do something else with the design?

I do not think so. I think it is important that your newest design for the More News box is also carried over to the From The Forum/Latest from the Forums box right next to it. Not sure if you make this happen, or if you order Yop/Fangu, but just make sure that your design is implemented into Fhtagn so we don't forget it. =)

Edit: It would also be nice to see those green borders from your draft implemented into the Fhtagn preview page.

 

[Flintlock]

Not sure if you make this happen, or if you order Yop/Fangu, but just make sure that your design is implemented into Fhtagn so we don't forget it. =)

I haven't touched any of the code on Fhtagn. Not because I'm unwilling to do so, but because Yop and Fangu can do - and are doing - a much better job than I could.

 

[Shademp]

I haven't touched any of the code on Fhtagn. Not because I'm unwilling to do so, but because Yop and Fangu can do - and are doing - a much better job than I could.

Affirmative. Yop will implement your box designs (into fhtagn) sometime during the following week.

 

[Flintlock]

I've been putting some ideas together regarding the categories and should be able to post them soon. Just in case you thought I'd forgotten

 

[Shademp]

@Flintlock

An almost-last-minute observation was made and we need your help.

The main/home page is lacking direct access to pages like "Advent Children", "Guide Book Translation". On other pages like the news list page these links exist to the left. But we need them on the home page as well, but without adding links to the left like in the news page.

So the plan is to create sub-menus:

What we'd need from you is a proper design for these. My only concern is making the arrows look fine. If the arrows are designed well, we may not need to tinker with anything else. I figure anyway that we need arrows to show that there exists sub-menus there.

Fan Works ->
TheLifestream Audiobooks (<--page will be updated)
Essays & Analysis


Book Translations ->
Dissidia Ultimania
FFVIII Ultimania
FFIX Ultimania

Translations of stuff aside from Ultimania books will be included as well, so the list won't always be this repeating.

 

[Flintlock]

Sure, I can knock up an arrow. Shouldn't be more than a two-minute job Remind me next time we're on IRC together.